


The Product (WIP)

by CoatTheBoneless



Series: The Product [1]
Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-28
Updated: 2018-10-28
Packaged: 2019-08-09 05:17:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16443617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CoatTheBoneless/pseuds/CoatTheBoneless
Summary: The WIP version of my Creative Writing class project. A dystopian vision of the future, confined to one factory and about the strange Products they manufacture. Gets a bit gory in places. Comments and constructive criticism are encouraged!





	The Product (WIP)

Cooper looked out across the factory from his perch up on the catwalk, his eyes scanning across the rows of machines. He watched the factory work, the machines in perfect harmony with each of their fellows. First the swarm of clicks, like a thousand typewriters chattering away. Then a wash of warmth and the soft whirring of an army of computerized minds thinking. He took a deep breath in as the third and last sound, a wet crunch, echoed a hundred times around the room. He held it in for a moment, letting the scent of metal and oil seep into his lungs. And he let it out again.

“I love my job,” he said to himself.

And why shouldn’t he? He hardly ever had to actually work, and when he did it was engaging and fulfilling. He was paid decently, considering the times. He had no real boss nagging him, no coworkers annoying him. He could spend all day up there on the catwalk, in a sort of meditative state, the smell of machines filling his nose.

A short, sharp alarm sounded, and Cooper zeroed in on the source. He strode over to the stairs and down onto the factory floor. He followed the red light over to one machine, opened up a panel on the side, and stuck the front half of his body into its interior.

One thing that Cooper missed about not having any coworkers was that he had no one to joke with. There weren’t any water coolers to lean next to, or cubicle neighbors he could chat with. It was times like these that Cooper found himself wishing to have someone to talk to. He’d make little jokes as he worked on the machines. Something witty. Sarcastic, but also dark. Something like “seems to me these machines are the only things with heart left!” He whispered it under his breath as he sautered a wire. He’d have to work on it.

At this point, he was supposed to look deeper into the machine. He was supposed to see if anything had happened to the Product. And if anything had, he was supposed to press the big blue button on the outside of the machine. He closed the panel again, screwed it back in place, and hit the button.

At this point, Cooper knew, a light would come on in Mary’s office. A short, sharp alarm would sound. She would get up from her usual tasks, coding or designing implants, and haul herself down here to deal with things that were not his business. By the time she arrived he would be gone, losing himself among the labyrinth of steel. She would have no way of calling him, other than simply raising her voice. And these machines were awfully loud.

She would open a hatch on the machine and haul the limp product out onto the factory floor. She would examine it, assessing whether or not it was worth keeping. She would poke and prod at plates and wires, measuring them to see if they had been implanted correctly. She would deal with them accordingly. Then she would return to her office to wait for the next alarm. Then the machine would return to work, now off sync with the others in the factory. It would annoy him for the rest of the day, like a piece of popcorn stuck in his teeth.

A second alarm sounded right next to him, making him flinch. Another machine had broken, the one just to his right. He gave a small sigh, smiling.

“What can you do?” he muttered to himself, as he took off the side panel and climbed inside this second machine. It was an easy fix, and he was done in minutes. But the problem wasn’t the machine itself. The problem was Mary. She was already down on the factory floor, and the blue alarm only went off in her office. She would go all the way back up to her office before she would see the second alarm, if she noticed it at all with just the light and not the accompanying sound. If the machine were stopped for too long, the company algorithm might not take kindly to it and dock them both pay. There wasn’t really much of an option. Cooper would have to look the Product over himself.

He was trained to do so of course. The company didn’t leave anything to chance. It just wasn’t his specialty. And he hated to do it. Seeing the Product out on the street on his daily commute already made his skin crawl. And the Products that didn’t turn out right were often much worse. He opened the latch.

Inside lay the Product. The chamber it was housed in looked a lot like air vents that heroes would crawl through in the movies. An army of thin mechanical arms had surrounded its form, some frozen in the act of cutting or piercing. The Product was all but complete, and would’ve been merrily on its way had the machine broken down a second later. The occipital implants, the final step, had even been installed. But Cooper could see that everything was a bit off. It made sense, the targeting system had slipped out of calibration. Each plate, each stitch, and each wire were just slightly crooked, out of place.

But the worst was the eyes.

It seemed that the targeting had slipped not all at once, but gradually. Cooper guessed that each mistake, each missed stitch, had knocked off the machine’s aim little by little. By the time the occipital implants had been installed, the calibration had been off enough to clip through the bone of the eye sockets, shattering it and also probably throwing off the wires that were supposed to self-install in the Product’s brain. Who knew what the Product would be like now? It was impossible to tell without an x-ray and a neurological expert sent in from Seoul, and that would be a colossal waste of resources for a single Product. He called for an automated transport, and when it arrived he grabbed the Product by the shoulders and hauled it up into the bed of the vehicle. Before he could punch in the option for “recycler”, he heard Mary’s voice behind him.

“You really enjoy this, huh?”

Cooper turned, surprised.

“Did you give him the once-over?” She asked.

“Yeah, of course.”

She raised an eyebrow and scowled. “Let me see him.”

He stepped aside and gestured broadly towards the self-driving vehicle. “By all means.”

Still scowling, she climbed up into the bed, and as she passed Cooper got a whiff of her breath. She’d been drinking.

She took several minutes staring at the Product, and then set to poking and prodding it. She shoved it up on its side to look at its back. She opened its mouth and peered inside. She gently brushed the ruined landscape of the right side of its face. Finally, she stood.

“He’s salvageable. He won’t be able to do what he was supposed to, but he can still be useful.” She nudged his right arm. “He was given heavy lifting upgrades, and I can see why. He was already very fit. He won’t need those fancy head wires as much if he’s just gonna be hauling stuff around.”

She gestured at the Product with a wide motion, taking it all in. “Some of the implants hit bone and if they didn’t break going in, they’ll break coming out. So a lot of him isn’t recyclable anyways.”

“It’ll be unpredictable. We don’t know what happened in its head.”

“What, you think the wires install themselves without their own basic guidance system? It's far from perfect but it's close enough. And like I said, we won’t give him to the general public. We can make him useful here.”

“What will Seoul say?”

“If they notice at all, they’ll commend us for our efficiency. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of the paperwork.”

Cooper paused for a moment. He shrugged. “Alright.”

Mary grinned. “Just give me a moment to boot him up.”

She poked a sensor in the small of the Product’s back and it spasmed for a moment before lying still again. Its eyes opened, and it sat up slowly and stiffly. It turned to look at them both. Cooper stifled a comment about ‘piercing eyes’.

Mary leaned in and pressed a second sensor, this time at the base of the Product’s neck. She leaned in close and spoke slowly and clearly.

“You will assist this man, Cooper Hill, in his work.” She said. Cooper tried to interject but was quickly cut off. “You will do everything he asks.”

She fixed him with an intense stare. “Don’t you need the help? The automated transports can be frustrating to handle, and you can’t carry some of the larger parts yourself.”

Cooper returned her long look. This woman stayed up in one room all day, doing nothing but drink. And now she was landing him with this grotesque… failure. It drove him speechless.

“Well, I’ll leave you to it.” She said. And she turned and walked away, back to her office.

Once Mary was out of sight, Cooper turned to his new assistant. He looked it up and down once more.

“Let’s take you out for a test drive,” he said, mostly to himself.

Cooper spent the rest of his shift ordering the Product around. Even if there was nothing to do, he’d still have it run laps around the factory or exercise with heavy spare parts. He would only half pay attention as the Product went through the pointless work. But Cooper had to admit, Mary had been right about one thing. This Product was strong. It might be useful after all.

But even before the shift was over, Cooper noticed a glitch in the Product’s behavior. It would forget steps in complicated tasks. It seemed to focus elsewhere during lengthy commands. And it never sat still. Even if it had no commands, it would twitch and fidget, as if it was nervous. But these were small problems, problems that could be worked around. He’d found a programming prod in storage and would give the Product shocks every time it fell out of line. He almost found it more entertaining than his usual meditative watch from the catwalk. The shift passed quickly after that.

The next morning, Cooper didn’t find the Product where he’d left it shut down. After a few minutes of searching, he found it in one of the storage areas in back, kept warm in order to preserve organic chemicals. He turned it back on, had it follow him out onto the factory floor, and clocked in.

Cooper didn’t feel like messing with the Product this morning. Like a new toy, the Product had seemed interesting when he’d first got it, but he still preferred his solitude. He told it to stand idly on the factory floor and follow any loud noises or red lights it saw. Then he went back up to his usual spot and relaxed into his usual calm watch over the machines.

His thoughts today were about Mary. While she had never seemed to be the most friendly person, she had been particularly antagonistic yesterday. She had never snapped at him before or intruded into his workspace, though to be fair they didn’t interact much. Perhaps it was the alcohol, or she was frustrated with her own work, or it was her children that were making her so irritable. He had no way to tell. As Cooper was pondering this he saw movement down on the floor; the Product was wandering among the machines, looking at them with what seemed like an approximation of curiosity. He sighed. Whatever was eating at Mary, he was stuck with the consequences. She’d undoubtedly done all the paperwork and put this failed Product into the system. Trying to get rid of it now would be destroying company property. He trudged down the spiral staircase to fetch the programming prod and get the thing back in line.

But he couldn’t find it. He looked through the storage rooms, scoured the factory floor, searched all the railings up above. It was gone, as if it had vanished into thin air. The factory clattered around him as he turned a corner and ran directly into the Product. A dozen cold metal implants poked into his ribs as he bounced off the thing and landed square on his ass.

“Damn it, watch where you’re going,” he groaned as he climbed back up onto his feet. The Product stared back, unblinking. And in that moment, Cooper came to a decision. Seoul would just have to deal with one less ruined, useless worker.

“Follow me.” He told the Product. It dutifully fell into step behind him. He led it to the front of the factory, where the loading area, recycler, and incinerator were. Cooper pointed at the conveyor belt that led into the incinerator. “Lie there.”

But the Product didn’t move. It seemed to be looking somewhere else, as if it were a six-foot-tall child unable to pay attention to a school lesson. Cooper reached up, snapping his fingers a few times in front of its face. “Hello? Anybody home? Don’t break until you’re already on there, I really don’t want to have to haul you around.”

But it just kept staring. When it tilted its head slightly, again in an imitation of curiosity, Cooper came to the sudden realization that the Product wasn’t just staring off into space. It was staring at the Products-to-be. The sedated bodies of people of all shapes and sizes, moving slowly but steadily out of a large, self-driving 18-wheeler and into the factory. Cooper groaned, and grabbed for the Product’s shoulder. But before he could touch it, he felt a clammy hand suddenly clamp around his forearm. The Product, still staring at the sedated bodies, had seized it. Fear began to flood Cooper’s chest as he tried to pull himself away, but the grip wouldn’t budge. It was like a steel python had wrapped itself around him and was refusing to let go.

And then the Product began to drag him.

Cooper’s panic flooded his system with adrenaline, and he was just about to gain leverage on the Product’s grip when he felt a second hand grip his hair. Cooper began to scream as one of the bodies in line was replaced with his own. He felt more icy clamps around his forehead, his wrists, his waist, his feet. _I can still get free_ , he thought. _These weren’t designed to hold struggling people, just to hold limp bodies steady!_ But while he did feel his bonds loosening he couldn’t possibly break out fast enough before he entered the first stages of the machine.

Up in her office, Mary eyed the programming prod leaning up beside her door as the screams began to drown out the rest of the factory’s noise. She took the first swig out of the bottle on her desk, as the machinery’s chattering began beneath the louder, more shrill noise. Then the whirr and warmth of computers thinking. Then the final, wet crunch, and all was silent.

**Author's Note:**

> [Find me on Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/coat-the-boneless)


End file.
